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It wasn't a dream.
It was a silence so ancient that when touched, it remembered it had been forgotten.
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Ae'lyra awoke without knowing how long she had slept.
She felt no hunger.
No cold.
Nor the usual tension that forced her to rise before the world remembered she still existed.
Only a soft weight across her chest. Not painful. Not warm. Just... present.
As if the ground had exhaled deeply... and in that breath, had allowed her to remain.
The sky above the crater was still not a sky.
It remained that violet-blue mist that floated like a hanging ocean, covering everything in a mineral glow.
Sometimes she thought the color didn't come from above, but from within: from the stone, the fire, from herself.
The short-winged bird, her small companion for weeks now, slept beside her hip.
And it did not tremble.
Nor breathe like prey.
But like something that had finally stopped being hunted.
Ae'lyra sat up slowly.
Her blindfold remained in place.
And yet, the crater had shape, depth, and texture in her mind: the contours carved by wind, the cracks like open veins in the rock, the glowing lichens spreading across the ground like constellations.
Nothing spoke.
And yet, everything whispered that something deep within this place... remembered her.
Mëkhael was awake.
Sitting on a flat rock, hunched over, smoking that pipe that never burned but always released sweet, damp smoke.
Ae'lyra looked at him.
Or rather, sensed him.
Her vision was not ocular: it was sensorial, fragmented, vibratory.
He was short—shorter than his shadow suggested.
Broad of torso, with arms shaped like twisted roots. His skin was not uniform: a mix of bark and eroded stone.
His skull was covered in dry moss, and his drooping ears resembled wilted leaves, adorned with bone fragments and dark seeds.
But what she perceived most... was the weight of stillness.
Not immobility, but something that had learned to be part of its surroundings.
Like a rock that knows it need not move to have power.
He did not look at her.
But he knew she was awake.
He spoke without lifting his eyes:
—"You slept longer than the crater usually allows."
Ae'lyra didn't reply.
There was no need.
—"Maybe you dreamed," Mëkhael continued, blowing smoke into a crack in the stone. "But here, dreams are not yours. They belong to the ground."
He lowered the pipe, exhaled deeply, and added:
—"And when the ground dreams of you... it's best not to wake it too harshly."
Ae'lyra didn't answer Mëkhael.
Not because she lacked words.
But because words didn't belong to that moment.
What she felt couldn't be spoken aloud without breaking it.
So she walked.
Barefoot.
Silent.
Along the crater's edge, where the stones curved like the ribs of a sleeping body.
The earth trembled.
Not like an earthquake.
But like a massive creature shifting lightly in its sleep.
Every step brought images.
Not visions as before.
Not of broken futures, nor tangled timelines.
These images were different.
They were textures of ancient memory, not buried in her mind, but in the rock itself.
She sensed fragments of sound, breathing, extinguished light.
Cries that had never escaped.
And a language that was not a language...
but an echo.
She stopped before an uneven stone, covered in blue lichens.
Placed a hand on it.
Not to explore.
Not to ignite her sight.
Just to feel.
And then, the ground responded.
A pulse.
Slow.
Dense.
As if the stone remembered her.
As if it had touched her before... in another form.
Something opened in her mind:
A tall figure with spirals carved into its skin
A temple buried beneath the roots of the first forest
A song made of impossible syllables that named things without names
Ae'lyra stepped back.
Not in fear.
But because this was not a vision.
It was a memory.
But not hers.
It belonged to the ground.
And now... it was using her to remember itself.
Mëkhael appeared beside her, soundless.
He looked at her from his usual stillness.
And said, in a dry voice, like bone that doesn't want to crack:
—"The stone remembers because you touched it.
Not the other way around."
Ae'lyra turned slightly toward him.
She couldn't see him, but she sensed him like an ancient root—not alive, but still insisting.
—"Everything that sleeps, little one..." he said, lowering his gaze to his own feet,
"also wants to dream of you."
—"But it doesn't always understand how."
Ae'lyra slept that night without intention.
She didn't seek rest.
She simply laid herself down on the crater's warm stone, and the world... swallowed her in silence.
There was no darkness.
No light.
Only texture.
It felt like being inside a crack, as if her body had stopped being physical and now filtered through geological layers, through sediments that wept with the memories of all that had been buried.
She didn't float.
Didn't fall.
She slid.
As if her consciousness was a leaf caught in the breath of a volcano.
And then, she heard it.
A chant.
Grave.
Inhuman.
Without shape or melody.
It was like a petrified hymn repeating in echo every hundred thousand years.
And the most terrifying part wasn't that she understood it...
but that it used her name.
In the dream, Ae'lyra saw roots.
Not of trees.
Of structures.
Pillars buried deep—remains of temples still alive beneath tons of earth.
They breathed in slow motion.
And curled toward her as if they had been waiting.
Each one bore an inscription.
Not words.
Memories.
Events.
Paths that never happened.
And one of them—a spiral of stone still stained with dried blood—began to turn.
She felt her body fragment.
Not break.
Fragment into pieces the dream could move.
When she awoke, panting, her skin damp with dried sweat, the crater stones had gathered closer, as if they had moved during the night.
And beneath her back,
the earth pulsed.
Not violently.
Just with the calm of something that was no longer fully asleep.
He looked at her from the cave entrance.
Said nothing.
But this time, he raised a hand.
And placed a small rock near the fire.
A gesture which, for him, meant:
"You're not alone in this."
It came in the early hours.
Before the mists had thinned.
Before the cráter stone warmed again.
Ae'lyra felt it first in the stillness of the trees—
not the silence of peace, but the silence of pause.
Birds did not stir.
The moss did not hum.
Even the pulse of the ground grew shallow.
Then, from the edge of the crater's ridge,
it arrived.
A figure—no larger than a stag,
yet with the presence of something that knew how to wait centuries.
It stood on two hind legs, clawed but slim.
Its body was feathered in tones of coal and ash,
though no light touched it directly.
Its wings—long, velvet-dark, unused for flight—folded tightly around its sides.
Its eyes were round and gold, not glowing, but reflecting something that was not present.
It carried no weapon.
Wore no marking.
But its spine bore ridges that pulsed in rhythm with Ae'lyra's breath.
She did not run.
Nor did she reach for the ground.
The creature bowed its head,
and then, without mouth, without voice,
it spoke.
—"You are the One Left Outside the Cycle."
Ae'lyra remained silent.
The blindfold still covered her eyes,
but she saw it.
Not with vision.
But with something deeper—
a sense that combined memory, intuition, and pain long silenced.
The creature stepped closer.
The earth did not protest.
—"We waited for the Spiral to burn,
but it chose to sleep.
You carry it still.
Muted.
Dulled.
Unwilling."
Ae'lyra tilted her head.
The creature's body trembled slightly, not with anger,
but like an old violin string straining under a note too long unplayed.
—"You must awaken the Heart of the Soil."
She did not know what it meant.
But her spine did.
Her blood did.
Something inside her cracked open,
like bark splitting to release a forgotten seed.
From the mouth of the cave, Mëkhael stood still.
He didn't speak.
Didn't intervene.
Only exhaled the smoke of his pipe—
not toward the visitor,
but toward Ae'lyra.
And in that silence,
she felt more alone than ever.
Because what had come...
did not threaten her.
It expected something.
Ae'lyra stood long after the visitor vanished.
It had not walked away.
It had simply folded into the mist—
as if it had only ever been an echo.
She touched the ground beneath her feet.
It was no longer humming.
It was waiting.
The message had been clear.
But it carried no demand.
No punishment.
No reward.
Only expectation.
She was not told to save.
Not to destroy.
Only... to awaken.
But Ae'lyra feared what that meant.
She feared herself.
Because awakening meant remembering.
And remembering meant risking the fire that had once shattered her mind.
She had been safe here.
The fire had gone quiet.
The symbol on her forehead had cooled, like an ember swallowed by ash.
Could she bear to relight it?
Could she carry what the earth wanted to show her?
That night, she sat near the fire with Mëkhael.
The bird rested in her lap, unaware of the weight pressing her chest.
The goblin poked the fire with a branch of blackwood.
—"You don't have to choose," he said, voice slow, heavy.
Ae'lyra remained still.
He looked at her finally.
His eyes were old stone under smoke.
—"But the ground has already chosen.
And it's dreaming with you now.
Whether you want it or not."
She didn't cry.
She didn't speak.
She only placed her hand near the flame.
And felt nothing.
Not pain.
Not heat.
Only... recognition.
When the moonless sky turned amber,
Ae'lyra stood.
Walked to the edge of the crater.
Past the ridge.
Beyond the moss.
Into the roots.
There, she found a crack in the stone—
one she had not seen before.
It pulsed softly.
Breathed like a wound.
And she stepped inside.
Not to fight.
Not to understand.
But because, finally...
she was ready to be remembered.
The path was narrow.
Not carved, but eroded—
as if water and time had agreed to forget what once stood here.
Ae'lyra moved slowly, barefoot,
her hand grazing the stone walls as she descended.
They were smooth in some places, splintered in others.
Like skin.
Like memory.
There was no light.
But still she saw.
Not with her eyes—still covered.
But with the tension in the stone.
With the breath of the earth rising in fragments through her soles.
She was not alone.
Not watched.
Not followed.
Accompanied.
By something ancient, unseen...
and patient.
At the bottom, she found a space.
Not a chamber.
Not a tomb.
A threshold.
The walls were black stone veined with pale green light.
Not glowing—bleeding slowly through cracks like veins that forgot how to pulse.
In the center:
a stone disc—half buried, half suspended.
It turned very, very slowly,
without sound,
without push.
Its surface bore the same spiral Ae'lyra carried on her forehead.
But this one was incomplete.
Missing its end.
She reached toward it.
Not fully.
Just enough.
And the moment her fingers brushed the spiral—
everything inhaled.
The walls,
the air,
the fire in Mëkhael's cave,
the trees in the crater,
the moss that had touched her skin for months,
even the broken bird—
All of it paused.
Because something that had not stirred in over a hundred million years...
now knew she was here.
She didn't collapse.
Didn't scream.
Didn't see a new future.
She only heard one sound:
stone weeping.
And in that moment, Ae'lyra knew—
She would never again sleep without awakening something else with her.
Not visions.
Not death.
But remembrance.
Of what the world had buried...
and now, through her,
would begin to dream again.
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The spiral did not burn.
The girl did not fall.
But the soil no longer slept.
And the child who was meant to wander...
was now a key the planet had begun to turn.
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